So that was the project before me: never say anything insecure, ever. At least not in front of a girl, although I figured it would be good practice to avoid saying insecure stuff in front of guys too. This didn’t seem like it would be too hard. After all, we’re not talking about something subjective here, like comedy, where what one person finds hilarious another person might find offputting and vice versa. Everyone basically knows the difference between insecure and non-insecure, even me.

And with that kind of setup, you’re probably expecting an essay about how it turned out to be harder than it looks. But it didn’t. It turned out to be every bit as easy as I thought it would. Seriously, all I had to do was not say insecure things, duh. How easy or hard it was isn’t the problem.

Now you’re probably thinking that it didn’t work. You’re expecting me to say that I refrained from saying insecure stuff, but girls didn’t like me any better—either because they could still magically tell I was insecure somehow, or because it turns out that girls look deeper than that and aren’t really as shallow as I was making them out to be. But that’s not it either. Girls—and, to be fair, people in general—really are as shallow as I was making them out to be, and the simple practice of never saying insecure things worked amazingly well. To be perfectly honest, I had sex with more women this past September and October than during any year-long stretch of my life before, or all four years of college. And I didn’t even go out that much. So without becoming boorish here, let it be established that never saying insecure things really does work, and is incredibly easy. Those things are not the problem.

The problem is that, as far as I can tell, I no longer have a personality.

So that was the project before me: never say anything insecure, ever. At least not in front of a girl, although I figured it would be good practice to avoid saying insecure stuff in front of guys too. This didn’t seem like it would be too hard. After all, we’re not talking about something subjective here, like comedy, where what one person finds hilarious another person might find offputting and vice versa. Everyone basically knows the difference between insecure and non-insecure, even me.

And with that kind of setup, you’re probably expecting an essay about how it turned out to be harder than it looks. But it didn’t. It turned out to be every bit as easy as I thought it would. Seriously, all I had to do was not say insecure things, duh. How easy or hard it was isn’t the problem.

Now you’re probably thinking that it didn’t work. You’re expecting me to say that I refrained from saying insecure stuff, but girls didn’t like me any better—either because they could still magically tell I was insecure somehow, or because it turns out that girls look deeper than that and aren’t really as shallow as I was making them out to be. But that’s not it either. Girls—and, to be fair, people in general—really are as shallow as I was making them out to be, and the simple practice of never saying insecure things worked amazingly well. To be perfectly honest, I had sex with more women this past September and October than during any year-long stretch of my life before, or all four years of college. And I didn’t even go out that much. So without becoming boorish here, let it be established that never saying insecure things really does work, and is incredibly easy. Those things are not the problem.

The problem is that, as far as I can tell, I no longer have a personality.